


With a Faerie Hand In Hand

by scribefindegil



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Crying About Craft Supplies, Enchantments, Fairy Tales, Gen, honestly I'm not sure myself, is it an au or the lost Labyrinth episode?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 14:04:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7576840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribefindegil/pseuds/scribefindegil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a "crying about craft supplies" prompt on Tumblr. The request was "plastic masquerade masks"</p>
            </blockquote>





	With a Faerie Hand In Hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesnadger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesnadger/gifts).



Mabel danced.

She’d been dancing forever. Or she was going to dance forever. Either. Both. Her feet stepped lightly in their white rose-petal slippers. Her gown billowed around her, sparkling and gossamer-fine. The tracery of pearls and crystals in her hair caressed her face gently as she spun. Everything was perfect. Everything would always be perfect.

The circle moved and her next partner reached for her hand. They were dressed in a glimmering orange robe and masked with a skeletal magpie face. Bright, dark eyes glittered out at her as they bowed and kissed her hand.

She curtsied, and the music struck up again. It was always the same song. The same waltz. The magpie whirled her around the ballroom, its feathers glimmering in the light of the dewdrop chandeliers that floated above them. The walls and the floor shone with their blurred, darkened reflections. She caught a glimpse of herself, her dress huge and white and perfect as a fairy bride’s, and her mask glittering with silver and white gems.

_—No—_

She blinked, and as she did so her foot caught on the floor. She stumbled, just for a moment. Just for a moment the music felt strange and off-key, the dancers looked wrong in some way she couldn’t quite describe.

Then the magpie caught her and all was well again. She let the placid smile return to her face, let her eyes follow nothing but the direction of the dance. It was all a beautiful, inevitable blur of fabric and feathers and fur and jewels, everything dark except for her and the King.

He was the only one who did not follow the line of dance, pulling his partners out from the flow to dance alone in the center of the ballroom. His mask, alone of all the dancers, glinted gold.

She knew that soon he would pick her. She knew it would change something. She didn’t know what. She didn’t care. Except . . .

The waltz slowed and ended—except it never ended, not really, only circled around again like the earth around the sun. She curtsied to the magpie, and turned to meet her next partner and—

There was something in her hand.

It didn’t belong there. It burned like hot iron, twisted like a snake, and she was about to throw it away, to smile and curtsy and dance on forever, but her fingers were clutched tight around the thing and wouldn’t move.

She stepped back. She stepped out of the line of dance, and only then did she look at her hand.

_Her nails were coated with pink polish, chipped and cracked—_

Her nails were coated with silver polish, smooth and perfect and filigreed with matte white lines.

She was holding a rod of red-hot iron, and it burned—

She was holding a hissing snake, and it bit—

_She was holding a dowel wrapped in lilac ribbon, and it had a plastic mask on the end._

Mabel blinked and looked at the mask.

It was ugly and vulgar, nothing that belonged here.

_It was beautiful. She’d made it with Candy and Grenda, glued rhinestones and glittery trim and most of a pink feather boa to the flimsy surface._

It was garish. It— It was—

_They needed masks for the party. Everyone else was fancy and rich and had theirs imported, but she assured her friends that theirs would be just as good. They’d laughed, and made Candy a spiderweb pattern out of glitter hot glue and turned Grenda into a phoenix._

_They needed to blend in, to look for—something. Why couldn’t she remember? Her mind was full of dark feathers and flashes of gold and one endless waltz._

Her hand was shaking. The music hurt her ears. Another dancer approached her and she shrunk away.

“My lady?”

The words were wrong wrong _wrong_ , she wanted to close her eyes close her ears curl up and go to Sweater Town and hide there until everything stopped.

“My lady?”

The King was coming for her, striding through the crowd.

She met his golden eyes for a moment and they were willing her to stay, willing her to step forwards again and join the dance, to let herself be stolen away to a place where she’d never have to grow up—

Mabel ripped the silver mask off her face. Her fingers closed around the dowel and she raised the other mask—her mask, the real mask—to her eyes.

The music stopped.


End file.
